Long gone days when fan fiction was considered a guilty pleasure, consumed only on glowing iPad screens under the covers at night, and never discussed outside of Tumblr. We are living in an era where Supernatural Misha Collins star proud about Dean/Castiel fanfic stats on Twitter, one Fanfic Harry Styles on Wattpad has been turned into a major movie franchise, and even Oscar-winning filmmaker Chloé Zhao openly admits write fanfic. Hobbies have become a cultural phenomenon, being mentioned casually in shows like Happiness, Only murders in the building, 13 reasons whyAnd Bob’s Burgers. And who could forget the Archive of Our Own (more widely known as AO3) is grabbing it Hugo Award in 2019?
Born in 2009, AO3 is one of the story sites with the largest fan base today. It’s an open source, multi-fan archive for transformative fan works that, as of January 2023, is home to about 10.5 million works across more than 55,000 fandoms, from big names like Strange things and Marvel at the darkest corners of the internet you can imagine. AO3 is now almost a household name, at least for any Gen Z or millennial with an online presence to some degree. And as fan fiction becomes more popular, it seems that some users are also pushing for AO3 to keep up with the technology. More specifically, for the archive to work…well, more like TikTok. Visualize a “for you” page that greets you when you log into the repository. It automatically recommends your next fanfic to read, like a very helpful friend grabbing a book on the shelf for you that they just read. know you will love.
Let’s be clear, though: This idea won’t see the light of day. “An algorithm will never happen,” Claudia Rebaza, a volunteer for AO3’s parent group, Organization for Converted Works (OTW), told me bluntly. But the debate over whether AO3 should have an algorithm has revealed what is so special about fan fiction and the importance of maintaining a space where creative works can only be found. use. exist.
I got it. As someone born in 1997, it’s hard to recall a time before personalized algorithms, rankings, and recommendations. It feels like everywhere on the internet is trying to be more like TikTok, from Instagram with its Reels (until Kylie Jenner complained) to Twitter’s “for you” feed. For better or worse, today’s world feels deeply online. As nearly every aspect of our lives is optimized, it means that some also want fan fiction to keep up with the times.
But the point is: AO3 is not a social network. It is simply a space that stores a huge collection of works. It’s basically a gallery on your phone. Being a nonprofit run by volunteers completely distinguishes AO3 from other fiction fan sites like Wattpad, an entertainment company. Rebaza explains: “AO3 is designed to be an archive, not a social media site, and we as a non-profit will never run ads. “So we’re not trying to get people to spend more time on the site or make anything go viral.”
Another aspect that sets the repository apart is its lax content policy. While the website still draws lines at some content—explicit material about actual minors, obvious plagiarism—nearly all fan work is allowed. The only major requirement is that users tag work with rape/non-fraudulent content, graphic violence, the death of a protagonist, or minor content (in addition, the author may can simply tag “Creator chose not to archive alerts”). But as long as the content is properly tagged, it can be allowed “no matter how bad, objectionable, or misspelled we may personally find it to be,” according to the website’s terms of service.
It is a policy that has been both praised and criticized. But one of the reasons for AO3’s laid-back philosophy is that fan fiction has historically faced a lot of opposition and censorship. For instance, Fanfiction.net (FF.net), one of the first major fanfic sites on the web, banned all works based on anything by Interview with Vampire author Anne rice after she reportedly threatened legal action. (Law regarding fan fiction is unclear, but the OTW believes that non-profit, adaptations fall under “fair use.”) In 2002, FF.net began working on its own. strict book “no NC-17 content”. Then in 2012, the popular website removed a large number of stories, perhaps stories that were deemed too mature. This move has been widely coined FF.Net purge by fans, and it raised concerns about the possibility of disproportionate influence on slash (same-sex couple fics) authors.
